Catch-up, Part 1, Pre-NYE

I stole this pic from here.

On the night before the night that was a bit "out of focus"... Murray and I discussed the year that was over a beer or 2, what we had accomplished and what we wanted from 2007. I mentioned that I wanted to get my PADI License (SCUBA License) and Muzz excitedly infomed me that his mate was a divemaster and that he might be able to organise a simple dive to see if I actually liked diving prior to me forking out $400+ on the course.

"How exciting!", I thought.

I woke up the next day at about midday (see how lazy I've been these holidays!?) and not long afterwards I received a text message from Muzz asking if I wanted to go on a dive that afternoon. "Did I?!"

Heck yes, girlfriend.

I cleaned up the house a bit and got all my shit together. I met Muzz and Geoff at Muzz's place and got a crash course in SCUBA equipment. I was very excited and a bit nervous. I was getting a 4 day course compressed into half an hour... or so it seemed.

When we finally walked into the water at Shelly Beach I felt quite strange. I love the beach and swimming but I felt so bulky and uncoordinated. After I finally got the hang of breathing (one would think 26 years of doing it would be enough practice) and some words of encouragement from Geoff and Murray I surrendered to the beautiful underwater world.

The only reminder of the hundreds of scantily clad bodies sprawled across the sand were the snorkellers floating above my head, they would sporadically come into vision as they tried to dive to our depth, unsuccessfully trying to get a glimpse of what lay dirctly in front of us.

Ocassionally I forgot to breathe when I got distracted, scared or excited. I almost shat myself when a very well camouflaged stinray stirred up some sand and darted into the distance not far from where we were. After that I was really paranoid when swimming near any of the stingrays (stupid crocodile hunter). I saw gropers and loads of other fish that I didn't know what they were. I also spotted some (fish) eggs on the kelp that we swam through.

It was a really surreal experience walking out of the water at Shelley beach with all this SCUBA equipment on, we followed the path down to the car and managed to walk through a wedding ceremony which I thought was pretty funny.

So I got to go on a dive and I loved it. I felt really spoiled and completely safe with the boys and I can't wait to get some more dives (and my licence) under my belt in 2007.